After having made books for over thirty years and retired from teaching bookbinding and book art, I find myself with rolls of book cloth and a bin of book cloth scraps. I work from the rolls periodically for gifts and guest books, but the scraps are really only good for making endbands or collages. Collages. I’ve been making small cards with fabric scraps for a few years, so using the book cloth should be similar. It is. And you can even iron it afterwards.
Perhaps we are born to sort, to figure things out. I’m a fan of solid colors, particularly working with shades and gradations, so I began sorting by color. Reds were first, then greens, blues, tans, and purples.
I layer and machine stitch one or two colors on interfacing as a background collage, then decide what image makes sense with the color(s). I comb through the bin of stencils I’ve made previously for one that fits, as I did for “Afterwards,” or I may draw and cut a new stencil, which I did for “Shorebird Meetup” and “Overwinter.” The latter has a two-color stenciled image. Backing the piece with linen fabric and stitching with complementary or contrasting sashiko or embroidery thread finishes the quilt. Rather than a slat and sleeve, I imagine these works as framed, floating inside a mat.
On a road trip I saw a field of burnt grapevines, blackened and bent over, which prompted this fiery scene. Perhaps the metallic gold branches are rising from the ashes.
Blues and tans always suggest ocean and beach to me. My weekly walk by San Francisco bay calls out these shorebirds as familiar friends: Snowy Egret, Great Egret, Great Blue Heron, and the little peeps, perhaps Sanderlings.
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Although Monarch butterflies are known to have a migration pattern, they seem to thrive in our neighborhood year round these warming days. But when I traveling south and catch a glimpse of hundreds of them clustered and overwintering on a tree, I feel there may be hope.
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